Wednesday, April 26, 2006

My Fake Obituary

Inspired by a recent posting on a messageboard by D.F. Lewis, I have decided to write my own obituary. It's not every day we get a chance to do such a thing. I have understandably kept it short.

Rhys ‘Orejitas’ Hughes

(1966-????)

Hughes was squashed flat by blind ambition at a busy junction of his life… The ambition was very large and very blind and didn’t seem him coming until it was too late… Hughes’s last words were, “Oh no, I never married!”

Immediately after his demise, statues of Hughes began being erected all over Swansea. One of the largest examples was erected next to the statue of Dylan Thomas in the marina, so that Dylan Thomas was now permanently in the shadow of Hughes. It became possible to tell the approximate time by the position of this shadow. Curiously the time was always the same – the Time of Belated Recognition.

Men and women of all ages started going on ‘Hughes Heritage Walks’ together, visiting various places that Hughes had frequented in the city. The men and women who went on these walks denied that they were members of an occult society and insisted it was simply a social thing. Inevitably some of these men and women held hands as they walked and fell in love and got married.

A newly discovered tropical fruit was named the Orejitasuma in honour of the expired writer.

That is to say, the substance of my own obituray owes itself to being inspired by your comments about the small press on the 'At The Mountains Of Molehills' thread at TTA, but I mustn't forget that the spur to write an obituary at all was as a result of Barry Wood's obituary thread on Thomas Ligotti Online.des